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Essay on the Paradox® Community © 2001 A.I. Breveleri There are many reasons why integrity runs wide and deep throughout the Paradox comminuty. Of course, professionals tend to be self-policing -- since usually no one else can understand our work. And the material rewards for good work tend to be sufficient to keep temptation at a distance. But there are a couple of reasons that relate especially to software. One reason is the nature of the work itself. Integrity is at the heart of every functioning coded algorithm: the abstraction modeled in the data must honestly reflect the real world, and the programs that manipulate it must accurately reflect the desired processes, or else the entire implementation is useless. This is why the best software developers never even consider producing substandard work, padding and overcharging, or otherwise cheating their clients and employers. I don't mean we think it over and decide not to, I mean we never think of it -- not soon enough to do us any good, anyway. Another reason is the lack of a big payoff for dishonesty. When I charge a client for 1000 hours, my greatest and practically only expense is the 1000 hours I must spend working on his problems. Now, I can spend the 1000 hours producing and wrestling with flaky complicated trash, or I can spend the 1000 hours designing and building an elegant and robust solution. Either way, my gross and net are the same. The only temptation to commit fraud that I encounter is in the bidding stage, when the client thinks a 1,000,000 hour job is a 1,000 hour job, and I know the only way to get the contract is to agree with him. As far as the Paradox community is concerned, it is self-selecting, but not the way a naive newsgroup reader would think. Carelessly skimming the posts, he might rashly conclude that the Paradox community is made up of individuals who are Paradox lovers before all else, who play with Paradox all day, and who think that Paradox is the final answer to man's age-long quest for fulfillment. Well, I am, I do, and it is, but that's not the point. The point is, the primary criterion for self-selecting into this newsgroup community is not a belief in Paradox, it is a belief in integrity. We believe that general wealth is good, that good tools contribute to general wealth, and that software programs are tools. We want everyone to choose the best software tools, and believe that educating the users is the way to influence them to do that. We have found that education requires consistency and honesty, the components of integrity. We search out software tools that are worthy of our integrity; one of these is Paradox. We search out others who believe as we do, about integrity and education. The primary driving forces of this newsgroup are integrity and education. Paradox for Windows is just a rallying point. [Editor's note: This essay was taken from a post on a Paradox newsgroup, with the author's permission.] Discussion of this article |
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